David Cameron says 'real progress' made with Vladimir Putin over Syria

Britain and Russia are to renew limited cooperation between their security
services over next year’s Winter Olympics, David Cameron has said, after
meeting Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, in the Black Sea resort that
will host the Games.

The move, which Downing Street stressed was temporary, signals a minor thaw in relations, seven years after MI5 and MI6 severed ties with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) over the poisoning in London of the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko.

After three hours of talks at Mr Putin’s villa in Sochi, the Prime Minister said the two leaders had also agreed to “drive the process” of creating a transitional government in Syria to end the “appalling conflict” that was “being written in the blood of her people”.

Russian President Putin and Britain's Prime Minister Cameron speak to media after their meeting at the Bocharov Ruchei state residence in Sochi

However, there was little sign of concrete progress on resolving how this might be done.

Earlier, today Mr Putin had given Mr Cameron a cordial if slightly strained welcome as the first British leader to visit Bocharov Rechei, his summer residence in Sochi. The Prime Minister ate a lunch with the Russian president and his aides, including a dessert of carrot sorbet served in caramel replicas of the tower of Big Ben.

Mr Cameron was said to have given the Russian president a framed picture of the two men watching judo together at the London Olympics last year and a ticket stub from the event. Mr Putin gave the Prime Minister a 1971 bottle of Armenian brandy, saying that Joseph Stalin had given Winston Churchill a gift of the same drink in 1945.

The Prime Minister said the talks had been “substantive, purposeful and useful” and he and the Russian leader had found common ground despite some “different views”.

“We both want the Sochi Olympics to be a safe and secure games, so today I have agreed with President Putin that there should be limited cooperation between our security services for the Sochi Olympics,” he said.

Mr Putin did not mention the intelligence sharing but his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the renewal of ties that broke down after Litvinenko’s death was “welcomed by both sides”.

“Cooperation between our special services was cut off, frozen, at the initiative of the British side but none the less we are satisfied to note the readiness to cooperate in the interests of moving forward with the provision and organisation of secure and calm Olympic Games in Sochi,” he said.

The announcement of closer collaboration comes less than a month after two Islamists of Russian extraction – with roots in the North Caucasus region where Sochi is situated – detonated bombs at the Boston marathon.

On Syria, Mr Cameron said he and Mr Putin had worked to put flesh on the bones of a planned peace conference proposed by John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, earlier this week.

“It’s no secret we have had differing views on how best to handle this situation,” the Prime Minister said. “But we share fundamental aims: to end the conflict, to stop Syria fragmenting, to let the Syrian people choose who governs them, and to prevent the growth of violent extremism.”

Mr Putin was much more guarded, indicating that any progress made was limited. He said “possible options” to solve the crisis had been discussed.

Mr Putin stressed that “Syria’s sovereignty must be protected”, reflecting Russia’s deeply held opposition to Western intervention against Bashar al-Assad’s regime. However, the Kremlin has agreed to attend the conference on Syria’s future with the US and Western powers by the end of the month with the aim of creating a transitional government.

Nevertheless, Mr Lavrov separately confirmed Russia would go ahead with a planned delivery of surface-to-air missiles to the Assad regime. It was not clear whether this would include, as reported, the high-end S-300 missile defence system.